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Reportedly, the European Community has also been 'bullying' the Ukraine.

The USA's Zbigniew Brzezinski sees the Ukraine as being vital to Russia.

He wrote that "without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire."

Armenia has joined the Russian customs union. Moldova and Georgia hope to do a trade deal with the EU.

Tymoshenko

President Yanukovych has jailed his chief rival, the Orange leader Yulia Tymoshenko.

In 1988, Yulia and her husband Oleksandr Tymoshenko opened a video business, with the help of her husband's rich father Gennadi Tymoshenko, who presided over a regional film distribution network. [48]

In 1989 - 1991, Yulia and her husband set up a larger video business, called "Terminal". [43][48]

Videos of Vladik from the Ukraine (right) have been sold all over the world.

From 1989 to 1991, Yulia was a commercial director of the Dnipropetrovsk Youth Center "Terminal".

In early October 2009, supporters of the frontrunner in the Ukraine elections, ex-premier Viktor Yanukovich, alleged that members of Prime Minster Yulia Tymoshenko's competing party were implicated in a child abuse case at a children's summer camp in Crimea in the Ukraine.

Lazarenko

According to Vladimir Kornilov, the director of the Ukrainian Center for Eurasian Studies:

"Tymoshenko joined the business wing of Pavel Lazarenko... who ... became Ukraine's Prime Minister.

"Today it is no secret, as it is a part of the investigation materials in the multiple criminal cases of contract killings that took place in Ukraine in 1990s, that the entire business created by Tymoshenko developed exclusively due to the ‘krysha’ (or criminal patronage) provided by Pavel Lazarenko".

http://wikiyulia.com/index.php?title=Tymoshenko_and_her_husband_are_accused_of_money_laundering_in_the_U.S.-The New York federal court re-opens the lawsuit filed by the U.S. Universal Trading & Investment Co. (UTICo) against the former head of the Unified Energy Systems of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko-former Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was sentenced in the U.S. to nine years in prison and a fine of $ 10 million. The plaintiff also claims that the former Deputy Minister of Finance Andrii Vavilov and 10 unidentified persons were also involved in the criminal schemes that fall under Organized Crime Act (RICO). In addition, UTICo refers to the evidence from the Ukrainian law enforcement bodies purporting that Yulia Tymoshenko paid $ 2,479,000 for contract killings through New York banks.